Daniel Silverman (colloquium abstract)

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Neutralization and anti-homophony in Korean

Daniel Silverman
San Jose State University

ABSTRACT

Neutralization in Korean involves a large number of oppositions, and affects a significant portion of the lexicon. Nonetheless, it induces remarkably little homophony. I suggest that these highly divergent facts may be intimately related: the neutralization of so many values in Korean is tolerated exactly because it has a negligible effect on the amount of derived homophony. Understanding how this came to pass requires an investigation of the history of Korean, especially in the context of its extensive contact with Middle Chinese. The present findings suggest a reconsideration of the role that Ôfunctional loadÕ (Martinet 1952, Hockett 1967) plays in patterns of sound change.